Press Release, 30.03.2019

Chairperson of the Yabloko party, Emilia Slabunova, spoke today at the 6th Congress of the Russian  Association of Political Consultants. The politician took part in the discussion on the topic “A New Period for Political Parties”.

Yabloko leader talked about the international political reality. Emilia Slabunova noted that one the key traits of this reality is the rise of populism.

“This has objective reasons: the defensive reaction of the human psyche to the growth of complexity, uncertainty, variety and diversity,” she stressed. “This will hold back development, contribute to the archaisation of life and consciousness.”

According to Slabunova, populism contributed to harsh and cynical pragmatisation of politics, economics and public life, loss of values, transition to the situational politics; therefore, it is necessary to fill up the moral deficit in politics.

“Filling up the moral deficit must take place, because cynicism has become critical a lot, without a re-opening of morality, the humanity will simply cease to exist,” Emilia Slabunova said.

The politician also described the Russian political realities. The political era, the meaning of which was post-Soviet modernisation, ended in failure: there were built neither a market economy, nor democracy, nor the state of law, nor federalism.

“Therefore, there was formed a peripheral authoritarian legal regime which was not governed by law and represented a succession of the Bolshevik-Soviet system,” Emilia Slabunova noted. “The power has been usurped by a small group of people by means of manipulation, corruption, lies, propaganda, reprisals and intimidation.”

Yabloko Chairperson also stressed that power was being strengthened not meaningfully, by its achievements and successes, but through barriers it built against citizens in the form of restrictions on the activities of public organisations, laws on foreign agents, undesirable organisations, etc. At the same time, the institutional possibilities for the activities of the opposition were being reduced and eliminated.

“The opposition is squeezed into the status of dissidents, [the government] tries to artificially marginalize it,” Emilia Slabunova said.

According to Slabunova, in addition to reprisals and propaganda, there are more sophisticated ways of fighting against the emerging democracy, for example, pseudo-democracy. These are all kinds of pseudo-institutions formed on the principle of loyalty: public and expert chambers and councils.

Yabloko Chairperson also marked nationalization taking place not only in the economic and financial, but also in the political sphere.

“After the end of the presidential campaign [of 2018], it was demonstrated visually, sometimes up to cynicism, how the Presidential Administration was performing a number of manipulations, for example, with the Civic Position party, which in a few days turned into a twin of the Progress Party,” Emilia Slabunova said. “There also emerges information on the upcoming change of destiny of the parliamentary parties, all this at the active participation of the Presidential Administration.”

The politician stressed that such artificial formation of the party system called was “categorically unacceptable”. According to Slabunova, if the party system is not formed in a healthy, active political competition, then there will be political products that later, when a change of government takes place, cannot take responsibility for the country and carry out all the necessary political and economic reforms.

In her speech, Emilia Slabunova also spoke about the tasks of the Yabloko party. She said that one of such tasks were the return to the State Duma. Another task would be to enable the citizens of the country to politically declare their disagreement with the policies pursued by the authorities.

“That is why we have now announced the “Make Your Voice Louder” campaign: we invite you to join our party in order to express protest to the adventurous foreign policies [of the Russian government], impoverishment [of population] and many other things,” the politician noted.

The Russian Association of Political Consultants was established in 2014 as the first professional association of political consultants organising and conducting election campaigns in Russia, and working with politicians and public figures during the inter-election period. The mission of the Association is to assist the process of formation of a legal democratic state in Russia.